Baseball Opening Day Unlike Anything Else

April 9, 1985|By Bob Fowler of the Sentinel Staff

Monday was the most beautiful day of the year in Cincinnati Snow fell two or three times, yet no one cared. There were reports, in fact, that locals refused to seek shelter when the ''April showers'' hit.

Everything was beautiful, too, in Detroit. It was 41 blustery degrees in Motown at 1:30 p.m., and three hours later the temperature had dropped to 37. Still, thousands celebrated.

Similar happenings took place in Boston, Baltimore and Kansas City.

The 1985 major-league baseball season began in those five cities. Opening Day, a time unlike any other in sports.

No single event, or series, can compare to the start of a baseball season. Opening Day captures and illustrates the very essence of the sport.

This is a game of anticipation. Will the batter hit a home run? Will he strike out? Will the fielders rescue the pitcher by turning a double play?

As fans, we think ahead. We consider all alternatives pitch by pitch and cheer, or jeer, the outcomes.

Opening Day allows us to put the entire season into that perspective.

When teams have 0-0 records, players are hitting .000 and pitchers' ERAs are 0.00, we can anticipate the season:

-- When will Pete Rose pass Ty Cobb in career hits?

-- Can Dwight Gooden repeat his wondrous rookie season?

-- Will the Tigers win again, or are they Fat Cats?

-- Can Boston get adequate pitching to go with its powerful batting order? -- Is the career-strikeout leader in October going to be Nolan Ryan (he has 3,874) or Steve Carlton (3,872)?

A game unfolds from the first inning to the last to answer immediate questions about winning and losing. A season progresses from Opening Day to a finale in October to solve more significant matters.

Thus, Opening Day is indeed something special.

It allows us to consider every team a possible champion -- even the Brewers and Pirates.

All batters are possible .300 hitters, each pitcher a potential 20-game winner.

Why, Bob Feller fired the first no-hitter of his career on Opening Day (April 16, 1940).

Presidents threw out ceremonial first balls when Washington had franchises and season inaugural contests.

A New York Yankees' rookie named Billy Martin got two hits in the same inning (eighth) on Opening Day, 1950.

Thirty-five years later, the rookie commissioner of baseball, Peter Ueberroth, made his debut in Cincinnati.

In ceremonies before the Reds played Montreal, he reportedly told the man standing next to him, ''This is my first game, and I'm a little nervous.''